11 papers
Curvature-guided topology and self-assembly in chiral nematics and liquid-crystal colloids
Ivan I. Smalyukh, Mykola Tasinkevych
In soft condensed matter, curvature does more than simply distort an ordered medium: it helps select defect structures, redistribute elastic stress, bias chirality, and guide self-…
From Knots to Crystals: Machine-Learned Potentials for Self-Assembling Topological Solitons in Liquid Crystals
Arunkumar Bupathy, Darian Hall, Ivan I. Smalyukh +3
Knotted fields in classical and quantum systems have long been recognized for their non-trivial topologies and particle-like behavior, but practical applications have been limited…
Analysis of Hopf solitons as generalized fold maps
Yuta Nozaki, Darian Hall, Ivan I. Smalyukh +1
The Hopf index, a topological invariant that quantifies the linking of preimage fibers, is fundamental to the structure and stability of hopfions. In this work, we propose a new ma…
Landau-de Gennes numerical simulation of nematic liquid crystals utilizing radial basis functions
Jin-Sheng Wu, Ivan I. Smalyukh
Numerical simulations based on radial basis functions have been developed for systems with complex geometries and have been successfully applied across various fields, including se…
The 2026 Skyrmionics Roadmap
Sabri Koraltan, Claas Abert, Manfred Albrecht +64
Magnetic skyrmions and related topological spin textures have emerged as a central topic in condensed-matter physics, combining fundamental significance with potential for transfor…
Fusion and Fission of Particle-like Chiral Nematic Vortex Knots
Darian Hall, Jung-Shen Benny Tai, Louis H. Kauffman +1
Vortex knots have been seen decaying in many physical systems. Here we describe topologically protected vortex knots, which remain stable and undergo fusion and fission while conse…